MINI COOPERS CELEBRATED
The Cooper S upset the establishment to win the Monte Carlo Rally in 1964, rendered the Mini a modish must-have and made Paddy Hopkirk a household name. Richard Heseltine looks back on a classic titan
It seems improbable now but victory on the Monte Carlo Rally virtually ensured front page news. It carried with it a certain cachet, attracting hundreds of cars so winning mattered, with works teams throwing everything into claiming honours whether it was outright or of the class variety. In the Mini Cooper, BMC’s Competitions Department had a weapon that belied its size to challenge cars with more than twice the power, if not more.
One of the greatest-ever rallies took place in 1964 – a contest that saw the might of Detroit take on the BMC works team from Abingdon. Ford America threw everything at winning but the now world-famous Mini Cooper S of Paddy Hopkirk and Henry Liddon wasn’t to be denied. At a stroke, it became as redolent of the Swinging Sixties as the Fab Four and the Mary Quant minidress.
We recall how the plucky Mini won big on so very many levels.
BIRTH OF A LEGEND
It was the little car that could, and did… frequently. The Mini Cooper in helped to make the Mini hip. Alec Issigonis’ little buzzbomb represented a bold new concept in 1959; it’s easy to forget that the public didn’t exactly greet it with bunting and marching bands. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The car that we all know and love – the first truly classless automobile – was initially a slow-burner and took a while to engender wider acceptance. You could argue that it took the arrival of the Cooper variant to give the car a much-needed boost. Domination in motor sport, whether it was on-track or off-piste, cemented the car’s worth – its value – in the public’s consciousness.
And how. Second-generation F1 team principal, John Cooper, had toyed with performance variants of other cars, not least the Triumph Herald and Renault Dauphine, prior to arriving at BMC’s door. Despite early reservations, Issigonis was talked around and the original Mini Cooper in Austin and Morris guises emerged in September 1961, complete with a long-stroke 997cc A-series (a short-stroke 998cc variant followed subsequently). Regulations for the Group 2 class of circuit racing and rallying required 1000 cars to be made, and in many ways the Mini Cooper was the first ‘homologation special’ in the accepted sense. A year later, Formula Junior hotshoe John Love drove his works car to victory in the British Saloon Car Championship.
Other variations on the theme followed, not
